It's Alex Sullivan's 27th birthday, and his friend Bryan Beard worries that he is one of the 10 victims lying dead inside the scene of the movie-theater mass shooting that has terrorized Aurora.

"We've been calling his phone all day, and it's been going to voice mail. I just don't know," Beard said.

Beard said he and their friends have checked all area hospitals and called his phone repeatedly but that there is no sign of Sullivan anywhere.

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Gateway High School in Aurora was established as a staging area for about 200 witnesses early Friday morning but gradually turned into a holding pen Friday afternoon for anxious friends and family looking for any sign of their loved ones.

Aurora police said dignitaries,

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whom they did not identify, planned to meet with family members at the school at 4 p.m.

The group has dwindled to a couple of dozen individuals as emergency crews circulate the area. Chaplains stand nearby to pray and comfort those who are clinging to a nervous hope.

"We're still hoping that he' s missing somewhere and that they missed him at the hospital," said Jim Schwab, Sullivan's cousin, who is watching the nightmare unfold from Rochester, N.Y., along with 20 of Sullivan's cousins, aunts and uncles.

"Alex actually worked at the theater," Schwab said. "But he was there as a patron for his birthday."

Matt McQuinn is also among the missing.

"Nobody knows what's going on with Matt. I've heard rumors that he got shot, but I don't know," said Diane Behling, who works with McQuinn at an Aurora Target store.

McQuinn's girlfriend, Samantha Yowler, was also in the theater at the time of the massacre. The couple had moved to Colorado from Ohio last November.

Yowler, the daughter of St. Paris Police Chief Scott Massie, is believed to be in a hospital in fair condition, according to Ohio's Urbana Daily Citizen. She had been shot in the leg and undergone surgery.

McQuinn's mother, Jerri Jackson, has flown in from Ohio to try to find her son.

"We've been trying to call that one hotline number, and we can't get through to it," said Stacie McQuinn, Matt McQuinn's stepmother. "We do know that he is not on the victims list yet."

"Sammy was excited to have three days off, and I knew they were going to the movies together. Matt was even going to go back to work at 4 in the morning," Behling said.

"I enjoy their company and their laughter. They're just good people," Behling said. "I hope they find him."

Seven victims of the shooting at the Century Aurora 16 were employees of the Red Robin restaurant at Havana Street and Florida Avenue.

"Out of the seven, two were treated and released," said Red Robin spokesman Kevin Caulfield. "The others have suffered injuries that were more serious, some requiring surgery."

He didn't provide further details on their condition.

Though the restaurant is open for business today, some Red Robin employees are assisting victims and helping to feed some of the people who were displaced, Caulfield said.